Not a good analogy. TASS stood for Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union. It was set up like Reuters of AP.
If you want to compare NBC news to a Russian equivilelnt, it would be Vremya, the nightly news. It was broadcast at 10:00 Moscow time on all stations all the way across the country.
In some ways, it was pretty lame ass. They rotated anchors so there was usually someone different on every night. (I think there were about 12 of them in the rotation, but it has been nearly 20 years now since i saw the show)
Advantages to Vremya... they did not do 5 second soundbites. If someone was being interviewed, you got complete sentences, maybe as much as 150 seconds even for man on the street interviews. Disadvantage,.... they didn't do 5 second soundbites. You got some speeches that went on like the energizer bunny.
Vremya did not pretend to be anything it was not. It was the news the government wanted you to hear. They didn't play games about being non partisan. The party was the state and the state was the party and to be in any way anti party was to be anti state. I don't think NBC has sunk to that level. Though there is another thread on tonight that does suggest that to ask questions of the 0ne does amount to sedition. I don't think we are there yet.